Many of us are using Macs without much regard to how much storage is left, and that’s okay. At best, you can go on like this for years, but at some point, the notorious “Your Startup Disk is Almost Full” alert is bound to kick in, prompting you to free up space before you add another file to your storage.
Keeping tabs on how much free space you have on your Mac is a good practice. This way, you maintain a healthy level of available storage space, so you can free it up well before it goes overboard, affecting your Mac’s performance.
In this post, we review two easy ways to check how much storage space is left and how to clear space on your Mac as a bonus.
Via the Apple menu
Below we described the most common method to access your Mac’s storage:
• Go to the menu bar and click on the Apple logo;
• Choose About this Mac;
• Choose the Storage tab. That will open a bar where you can see how different kinds of data are distributed on your disk. Hang on for a moment while your Mac does the math. Here’s how it looks:
This section also includes general information about your current storage capacity, but if you want to dive deeper into the data groups, click on the Manage button. That will take you to a screen with information on how much applications, Bin, books are worth in megabytes so you can get the complete picture.
Via “Disk Utility”
Although the above method is the easiest way to check how much storage space you have left on your Mac, it’s not the only approach. Alternatively, you can use the following method:
• Launch Finder from your Dock and go to the Applications section;
• Sort the list of your applications alphabetically by clicking on “Name” so that you can find the “Utilities” folder easily;
• Open the “Utilities” folder;
• Find the “Disk Utility” option and open it.
That will take you to the next section, where you can see how much storage is used up and what’s your disk’s capacity at the moment.
Bonus: How to free up space on your Mac
Let’s say checking the status of your disk didn’t put your mind at ease, and you have to make some room on your Mac. Don’t worry. All you need to do is to put Mac’s pre-installed tools to use. Those are designed to find, review and remove files taking up a lot of space on your computer. Let’s access those for a closer look.
Step 1. Access Storage Management options.
• Go to the menu bar and click on the Apple logo;
• Click About this Mac;
• Switch to the Storage tab;
• Click on Manage to access the space-clearing options.
Step 2. Consider storing your data in iCloud
This option lets you store your files in the Cloud. If you click on the button near this option, it’ll offer you to move any kind of data from your Mac to the virtual storage, including the files from your desktop and documents folder, photos and messages, and their attachments. iCloud offers 5 GB of free space upon sign up, but you should subscribe to one of the paid options if you need more storage room.
Step 3. Choose Optimize Storage
Optimize Storage lets you find and remove the movies you’ve already watched and left on your computer. If you want to watch them again, don’t worry: The next download of the same movie is free.
Step 4. Empty Bin Automatically
While you can always access the Bin from the Dock to review, restore, and get rid of your deleted files, Empty Bin Automatically lets you momentarily remove the files you left in the Bin for more than 30 days. All it takes is one click of a button.
Step 5. Reduce Clutter
This handy feature lets you identify hefty files on your Mac without the trouble of finding them manually. This way, you can quickly locate the biggest space-hogs and remove them. With this option, you can search for files by size and review your downloads – all using a single option.
To sum up, you can check your storage status from the Apple menu (it’s the most common way) or use Disk Utility via Finder. You can also manage your disk space using the Manage option under About this Mac – Storage. Good luck!
